matzaballman's Full Review: Agents Of Fortune - Blue Oyster Cult Movies
Agents Of Fortune was released in 1976, one year after the brilliant live album On Your Feet Or On Your Knees came out. "Agents" became B.O.C.'s most popular album to date, largely on the strength of Donald Roeser's Don't Fear The Reaper, which was their first top forty hit. It sports one of their best album covers, which I later hung up on my wall when I got my first one bedroom apartment (I also have a copy of their first album hanging on my wall!). The songs on Agents Of Fortune are:
1. This Aint The Summer Of Love M. Krugman-A. Bouchard-D. Waller
2. True Confessions A. Lanier
3. Don't Fear The Reaper D. Roeser
4. E.T.I.( Extra Terrestrial Intelligence) D. Roeser-S. Pearlman
5. The Revenge Of Vera Gemini A. Bouchard-P. Smith
6. Sinful Love A. Bouchard-H. Robbins
7. Tattoo Vampire A. Bouchard-H. Robbins
8. Morning Final J. Bouchard
9. Tenderloin A. Lanier
10. Debbie Denise A. Bouchard-P. Smith
The bonus tracks are:
11. Fire Of Unknown Origin A. Bouchard, E. Bloom, J. Bouchard, D. Roeser, P. Smith
12. Sally A. Bouchard
13. Don't Fear The Reaper D. Roeser
14. Dance The Night Away A. Lanier
Half of Agents Of Fortune is full of some of the best hard rock songs this band has ever done. The other half is made of dull, champagne rock songs that must have made their older fans scratch their heads and say "WHAT IS THIS GARBAGE?". The album gets off to a very promising start with the very evil and menacing hard rocker This Aint The Summer Of Love. A very dark song, it has a terrific vocal from Eric Bloom and what I think is one of Roeser's best guitar solos. Great tune, my only complaint is that it's the shortest song here. The album then goes straight into one of it's worst songs, the piano driven champagne pop/disco True Confessions. Al Lanier, who wrote the song, sings on it as well( for the longest time, I thought it was Eric Bloom who sang it). It's a terrible vocal performance..it's no wonder he never sang with them again. The only nice thing I can say about it is that it breaks up the dark mood of side one for a few minutes...not that the dark mood NEEDED to be broken up, mind you....
Don Roeser's Don't Fear The Reaper is next. If you haven't heard this song, then you haven't listened to the radio for the last 25 to 30 years. A terrific song that became a big hit for B.O.C. and made the album go platinum, for how many times I've heard it on the radio, I still like it a bunch! The liner notes spend most of the time talking about this song, stating that the other songs pale when in comparison to it. Well, they're about half right! E.T.I. is Roeser's other contribution to the album. The only song that Sandy Pearlman writes the lyrics for, it's a very satisfying hard rock song and very much in line with B.O.C.'s dark and scientific image.
I would have to say that the next song, The Revenge Of Vera Gemini, is definitely my favorite thing on the album. It starts off with Patti Smith (who wrote the lyrics) saying "You're boned like a saint, with a consciousness of a snake"....now there's a pleasant thought to start your day off with!. Smith, who sings the song with Al B., gave the lyrics to him for his twenty first birthday, but every time he tried to set it to music, it came out sounding like the Bob Dylan song Positively Fourth Street, which prompted Don Roeser to say to Al, "You got alot of nerve to rip off the melody for Positively Fourth Street!" I love the music and the vocals for this...it's a very spooky song. Patti Smith sounds like a ghost on this!!
Beyond this song, there is only one tune from the second half of the album that I can recommend and that's the very heavy rocker Tattoo Vampire, which describes a wild night in a Tattoo Parlor. Blue Oyster Cult almost seem to poke fun at their evil monster image on this, especially during the mock scary instrumental break. The other songs on the second half saw B.O.C. delve into champagne rock/pop and/or disco. Joe Bouchard's Morning Final starts off promising enough, with a very melodic guitar line, but gets worse as it goes along. The ending, which has someone with a very annoying voice( maybe it was Eric Bloom) trying to sell a newspaper and reading the headlines, is especially bad. I do like one lyric from Sinful Love, that line "I love you like sin, but I won't be your pigeon". The rest of the second half should have been silence, however....what were these men in the black tuxedos hanging around a roulette wheel with a very pretty blond thinking? To quote a very famous Led Zeppelin song, "And it makes me wonder...". When I listen to the album, it makes me think of that inside cover....this is music played by men in bowties and black tuxedos...even the heavy stuff. In terms of production, this is one of their better SOUNDING albums...very loud and bass heavy, but at the same time polished and sophisticated. It is certainly a much better sounding album than Secret Treaties. It's got alot of class and intelligence this album...even the songs I dislike!
The bonus tracks on the remastered CD are awful, at least the first two tracks. This version of Fire Of Unknown Origin, which has drummer Al Bouchard on vocals and has practically no melody to it, pales when in comparison to the one that would show up in 1981. It's very slow and quite dull and sounds like some of the champagne rock songs that grace Spectres and the second half of "Agents". Sally, a surf rock and roll song written and sung by Al B., is also quite terrible. Believe me, there was a darn good reason these songs were "previously unreleased" in the first place! Roeser's demo version of Don't Fear The Reaper is interesting, however and does'nt sound radically different from the version that made the album. I could do without Al Lanier's Dance The Night Away, though...
I'm a bit confused as to what to rate this album. The songs that I like here really are great and amongst some of the best B.O.C. have ever done, but the other half of the album is horrible( even though I found myself not hating it as much when I listened to the album in my Discman a few weeks ago. I don't know...maybe I'm starting to mellow out in my older age!). I'm giving it a three star rating, though it's probably more like three and a third stars.
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